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Re: Modding Greenforce lights

Well sorry guys. I got so excited by what Kiwi_Diver offered me as payment I didnt stop to take before and during pics. I havent even taken time to eat dinner!
Anyway the light arrived with out the bulb ( 21w HID I think) so I didnt even get to try it out anyway.

The light head is a huge beast. Way bigger than it needs to be for the LED set up. Even the Tri Star one is too big for my liking. The can is also quite big. it holds 20 5/4 AA size NiMh which are the same size as 18650 Li Ions ( talk about a killer battery pack mod!!!). While the tristar uses a "Arrow" cannister with 10 sub C's

1st thing to do was strip the guts out. That was easy enough. The bulb sits on a threaded insert and after unscrewing that the ballast pulls out.
I then mounted a pre made Quad XR-E aspheric assembly and heat sink to the threaded insert ( after a little machining) and stuck a 2.8 amp driver on the back. If you are familiar with my Quad aspheric maglite build this is no different.

The pain was getting the lens out. On this head and the Tri Star one the lens is held in by an O ring. Its pretty hard removing the O ring with out damaging it. ( Oh well O rings are cheap). I then thought the lens would simply push out like the Tri Star one did. It didnt. I used all kind of force on it. I even tried boiling water to get the aluminium to expand.
In the end I gave up. The lens is glued in. I carefully removed the original reflector ( Not really. Its a mess) with some pliers. The hole left is a standard MR16 size at a guess. I had hoped to machine it out more and try fitting 6 aspheric assemblies in there but due to the glued in lens it was not to be.

Anyway its all done now and while it was apart I replaced all the sealing O rings in the head and cable (there are 9 Orings that seal in the cable alone plus the others added for grip!).

The beam shot has been taken to my referenced standard. 2.4 meters from camera ( Canon G10) iso 80 f2.8 1/30thsec. ( as are the 2 shots above). Its a little over exposed.

Re: Modding Greenforce lights

To be fair to the tristar led it is about 5 year old technology.They also lie to there customers to get them to buy a new generation head buy saying the leds are fixed and cant be replaced yeah right.Looking forward to the mod.

Re: Modding Greenforce lights

Originally Posted by silent solutions

Ahh so this is why my light is taking so long!!!?

Ahhh, sorry I appeared to have queue-jumped Mark, it was Gregs idea, honest...!

I don't think he tried compressed air. No matter, in the end, he does not think he could have got 6 aspherics in there even if he had been able to mill out the front a bit. I'm pretty happy with what he's done and my Revo-dream PPO2 monitor has a new home.

Re: Modding Greenforce lights

The revo should by a better choice than those crappy jurgensen handsets hopefully you can get that tapping sequence sorted.Gotta go and fill a scrubber before the morning where I will be diving without my light.

Re: Modding Greenforce lights

So you've finally gone over to the dark side and stopped blowing bubbles then......Cool.....

A bit off topic but have you gone for the fully electronic version, what's your impressions so far?

I havent brought a rEvo, just a rEvo dream which is a 2 channel PPO monitor with HUD. I am fitting it to my IDA 71 CCCR ( Chemical Closed Circuit Rebreather) from the CCCP. But thats really a story for a different forum! It will be mCCR. I have only dived it in a pool as a pure O2 unit so far. Should get it in the lake in a month or so.

Re: Modding Greenforce lights

I made up a 3xp7 led assembly to put in a greenforce head but the new tristar p4 head is smaller than the one you have worked with. So i never got round to putting it togther.

What kind of conditions do i dive, it varies really in the uk all depends where we dive and how deep also the vis can vary..
At the begining of the year we dived a wreck at 34m which was pitch black which could have been mistaken for a night dive, during the summer there is still some daylight.

Re: Modding Greenforce lights

All finished. Heat sink is a push fit. Its 20mm thick and when it heats up will expand and squeeze against the light head to conduct heat away to the water.
KaiDomain driver is mounted on the back of the heat sink driving all LEDs in parallel at 700ma a piece. This should allow the 12 v 3.0ah NiMh pack to drive the LEDs for up to 3 hours on high.

Re: Modding Greenforce lights

Its not a new head. Its the original tri star head which appears to be different from the current tristar head.

I did a quick search but couldnt find any decent pics of the quadrastar.

Battery is a 12V NiMh pack. Never measured it but I guess at full charge it will be the same as most other 12v Ni Mh packs. Upto 14 volt.

Yep i know its the old tristar head, its a lot bigger than the new tristar P4 head which puts out 660 lumens unless you get the tristar max head.
if this link is removed google lumb bros and you will find the uk greenforce distributer, all the new heads are on there.http://www.lumb-bros-das.co.uk/acata...ght_Heads.html

When i quoted the new head in my last post i meant the new transformed head..

Re: Modding Greenforce lights

Wow. The STD 12 is quite a bargain. I reckon my quad aspheric set up would fit in there as it appears to be a MR16 sized head.

Anyway... your light is now under the control of NZ Post. Let me know when you get it!

The standard 12 uses one of them 2 pin bulbs, it has a seperate reflector.
but you can also pull all that out and use a mr16. Bit tight i think.
I did have the measurements for inside the new tristar P4 head which is bigger than the standard 12. I think it was only 37mm untill the head starts to shamfer down to the thread that screws into the battery.
Standard head retails for arounf £70 in the uk..

Re: Modding Greenforce lights

MR 16 is 50mm. You may be thinking or MR11 which is 35m.

The Pro Light IRC should be about 50mm ID I think.

I have another customer who wants a total can light system built and I think using a GF head with custom LEDs. GF umbilical and custom battery pack and cannister could be a good way to go. This will allow switching from the light head.